Digits

Most people tend to track the popularity of ultras based on number of finishes or number of races in a given year. And based on these metrics, ultra popularity rapidly increased after the year 2000 and is at its peak. This makes sense to me. The book Born to Run came out about 10 years…

I was messing around with my training log earlier today and stumbled upon some interesting numbers. Well, I found them interesting. I’ll let you be the ultimate judge though. Here are my monthly mileage totals going back to when I started logging them. The first thing that jumped out is that I just set a…

Below are my splits from the NJ Ultra. I didn’t have any targets heading into the race and pretty just ran what felt comfortable. Or as comfortable as possible. I ran fairly even splits for the first three hours until the heat started taking a toll on me. I’m a little surprised not to see…

Let’s say you want to get better at something (i.e. ultras). What’s the best way to accomplish this? Well, you could gather as many materials as you can lay your hands on (books, magazines, blogs) and read till your eyes bleed. There’s a lot of great information out there and by studying it all you…

The RD for the OD100 mailed out the detailed splits a week ago for this year’s race. I don’t think pace charts work too well for 100-mile races due to the variability of terrain and the inevitable lows that you go through. Hopefully, these can provide a guideline as to times you can expect to…

Even though I’ve been running for five years now and doing ultras for 3 of them, I’m still not sure if I’m doing the whole taper thing right. You’re supposed to ramp down your weekly mileage from your peak week to race day. My problem is that the only variance in my weekly mileage depends…

Second time’s a charm. So I headed over to my local track yesterday morning to get in my MAF test and I notice a sign for something called the Unionville Invitational. There are a couple buses with kids disembarking and several pavilions set up. I start my warm-up and it didn’t take too long to…

I think my body is messing with me. Or mocking me. Or quite possibly both. So my last post was all about how I’m not in a training cycle. That I’m just trying to maintain the endurance that was built up over the spring. Well after this morning’s run, I’m not sure if that’s necessarily…

Third Time’s a Charm This is my third consecutive April 100 miler where I’ve been gunning for a sub-24 hour finish. My first attempt resulted in a DNF and I walked in the last 30 miles of my second try. Both times I was pretty confident that I had it in the bag so I’m obviously…

Well, better late than never I guess. Here’s how my running ended up during the month of January. Please keep in mind that these are just numbers. Many runners out there do more or less with varied results. I have no training besides what I read off the internet so buyer beware. My mileage ended…